Low tire pressure light on then blinking

Check the driver's door jamb.

You are likely to find a sticker listing the exact tire pressures Toyota recommends for the vehicle, and I suspect it will list 39psi for the front tires and maybe 33 for the rears. (your car is a different model year than ours, so it could be different)

The bad news is that the sensors are inside the wheels. The tires must be dismounted in order to access the sensors.

Given the age of your car, it could just be that the disposable coin batteries in the sensors have gone bad. But again, nobody gets near them until the tires are removed from the wheels, and that is best done with a tire machine.

It is typically more practical to put a bit of black tape over the blinking light, and go back to periodic pressure checks with a gauge.

 

The sensor is built into the wheel's air valve assembly, on the portion inside the wheel. Changing it is a DIY project only if you have the tools to dismount and re-mount the rubber tires from the metal wheel rim. Very few home shop mechanics are so equipped. For everyone else, this is a job for a tire shop.

 

I had a sensor go off at the tire shop last year when they were mounting my winter wheels. I remember they couldn’t figure out which of the two front sensors was the problem and replaced both - no extra charge. They told me the sensors can go bad as the car ages, and mentioned the batteries as well. Seems like this should be a fairly quick and affordable fix for you.

 

Sensors usually go bad one after another over a six month period. So it’s considered best practice to change all four at once.

There can be quite a price difference between dealers, major tire shops and independent tire shops. A dealer may charge $100-$200 installed per sensor, a major tire shop like Costco is $60 per, while it is possible for a small tire shop to do it for $20 labor per tire with Amazon sensors you buy for $15 each.

Any shop needs to configure the car for the new sensors which is no issue for the dealer or the big tire outlets but not all small shops have the configuration ability for a Toyota. So verify a small shop can do the configuration if you select that option, assuming you don’t have access to Toyota’s Techstream scanner.

The Costco/Discount Tire tier may be the easiest and still give good value.

Amazon set

 

Your TPMS sensors' batteries probably has/have died. Toyota dealer can charge up to $1000 to replace all 4. Costco will charge around $200 to $260 to replace 4, depending on whether you will purchase and install new tires from them.

On the other hand, you can purchase 4 new batteries for $10 - 20 and replace them yourself. You don't need special tools, just the scissor jacket in your car, but you do need to break the tire bead to do it.

 

This is just one data point, but my 2010 had its first tire sensor need replacement in spring 2022, a year and a half ago, at age 12 for the car. I'm still waiting for any of the other three to fail.

When I brought a sensor to the place I usually get tires, they charged me $0 to demount the tire and remount with the new sensor. So the only cost to me the price of a sensor. (Probably the $0 labor only happened because I'm in their system as a regular customer who buys tires there. Anyway, it's worth going to wherever you get your tires, and asking.)

I've had the same kind of experiences with wheel bearings, another of those things where it's often said if one has worn out, the rest are just around the corner. In my last car I replaced one at 160,000 miles, and the next one three years and 50,000 miles later. After that, things happened and I never had that car long enough to need any attention to the other two.

It's absolutely true that these parts get designed to have the same mean-time-to-failure expectation. But it's also true that how long the things really last will fall on a curve and MTTF just tells you where the peak spot in the center of that curve is. In real-world use, the curve can be really wide. Things happen, and you might not still own the car by the time the next sensor or bearing conks out.

 

If you don't have annual inspections that'll fail you with a sensor light showing on the dash, and you're ok with the situation, I'd at least wait till you're replacing tires. Maybe longer...

 

duplicate

 

There is nothing different in TPMS, suspension or alignments. The cv boot is on the drive axle. They remove quite a bit to pull the axle. If it’s been worked on the alignment is likely to be off and may take life off your tires. There are high, medium and low dollar options. Call and get a deal for both at an independent.

 

TPMS is the tire pressure monitoring system, which turns on the low tire pressure light on the dash.